EASYREEDER

Anthologies

Poetry Is Bread

Edited by Tina Cane

Poetry is Bread is a forthcoming anthology organized by Tina Crane.

Children of the New Flesh

The Early Work and Pervasive Influence of David Cronenberg

Edited by Chris Kelso & David Leo Rice

Children of the New Flesh is a wide-ranging compendium of reflections on the enduring impact of David Cronenberg, one of the most significant filmmakers of all time. Focusing on a series of short films that Cronenberg directed in the 1960s and 70s, many of which have rarely been seen, this book considers the legacy of these works in their own right, as well as their relationship to future masterpieces like Videodrome, The Fly, Dead Ringers, and eXistenZ.

Much more than a work of tribute, Children of the New Flesh is a meditation on the nature of influence itself. It teases out the undercurrents in Cronenberg’s films, obsessed as they are with secret signals, sinister experiments, and mental viruses, and shows how these ideas resonate in our own paranoid, sickened, hyper-networked times.

Featuring original fiction and essays from luminaries such as Brian Evenson, Blake Butler, Michael Cisco, Graham Rae, Joe Koch, Gary J. Shipley, Tobias Carroll, and Charlene Elsby, and interviews with figures such as Kathe Koja, Patrick McGrath, Tim Lucas, and Bruce Wagner—not to mention an exclusive interview with Cronenberg himself—this book is at once a study and a living example of the singular power of hybrid forms. It’s an invitation to seek undead materials in the dark recesses of the past, and to use them as a means of tuning into the freakish wavelengths of the present.

Published by 11:11 PRESS

“New and longtime Cronenberg fans will devour this intelligent, earnest, and comprehensive tribute.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Children of the New Flesh is a must-read for film fanatics and fans of David Cronenberg. Edited by Chris Kelso and David Leo Rice, this collection explores the dark peripheries of Cronenberg’s influence and early work, examining a world of strangeness and mystery.” – Brandon Hobson, National Book Award finalist and author of The Removed   

“The living legend of eccentric cinema begets weird new progeny in Children of the New Flesh” —Rue Morgue magazine

“Do not overemphasize Cronenberg’s love affair with the physical body; that does a disservice to his deep, abiding, passionate interest in the energy body, the ethereal body, the body double, the cosmic body. In the end, he is a consummate philosopher of the spirit.” —Bruce Wagner, author of Dead Stars, Maps to the Stars, and The Marvel Universe

The Celestial Bandit: Tribute to Isidore Ducasse, the Comte de Lautréamont

edited by Jordan A. Rothacker 

Featuring work by authors and artists including:

Mark Amerika, Louis Armand, Ben Arzate, duncan b. barlow, Tosh Berman, R.J. Dent, Douglas Doornbos, Seb Doubinsky, Steve Finbow, Stewart Home, Chris Kelso, Faisal Khan, Dylan Krieger, Callum Leckie, Chris Lloyd, Alexis Lykiard, Jennifer Macbain-Stephens, Christopher Nelms, Golnoosh Nour, David Leo Rice, Jeremy Reed, John Reed, James Reich, & Audrey Szasz

Isidore Ducasse (1846-1870), better known by his pen name Comte de Lautréamont, is the most influential writer most people have never heard of. Maldoror, the first of his two works, has been described as the most evil book ever written. It has also been described as the funniest. Either way, it provides some of the most gorgeous, twisty, weird sentences in any language.

An inspiration to the Surrealists, post-colonial Caribbean writers, and the Situationists to name a few, Lautréamont still garners a following today. In The Celestial Bandit, editor Jordan A. Rothacker brings together twenty-four contemporary artists from music, visual arts, and the writing world to pay tribute to this unique and exciting influence. Poetry, essays, short stories, experimental texts, and a dictionary of disruptive neologisms, this anthology has it all. 

All profits from the sales of The Celestial Bandit will be donated to Surfrider Foundation for their efforts to protect our oceans that Ducasse loved so much.

Published by KERNPUNKT PRESS

The Best American Essays 2015

Edited by Ariel Levy, Robert Atwan

Hilton Als, Roger Angell, Justin Cronin, Meghan Daum, Anthony Doerr, Margo Jefferson, John Reed, David Sedaris, Zadie Smith, Rebecca Solnit, and many other esteemed authors, critics and personalities.

“Writing an essay is like catching a wave,” posits guest editor Ariel Levy. “To catch a wave, you need skill and nerve, not just moving water.” This year’s writers are certainly full of nerve, and have crafted a wide range of pieces awash in a diversity of moods, voices, and stances. Leaving an abusive marriage, parting with a younger self, losing your sanity to Fitbit, and even saying goodbye to a beloved pair of pants imbued with meaning are all unified by the daring of their creation. As Levy notes, “Writing around an idea you think is worthwhile—an idea you suspect is an insight—requires real audacity.”

Published by HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT

John Reed has written a stunning, terrifying history of his family’s relationship with his grandmother in an essay, “My Grandma the Poisoner.” —Angela Lashbrook, Flavorwire

American Wasteland

Bleak Tales of the Future on the Tenth Anniversary of 9/11

edited by Jason Pettus

With all the talk of “hope” and “honor” that was bound to arise during the tenth anniversary of September 11th, the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography thought it was important to also remind the future of what the last ten years have REALLY been like. That’s why the center put together this latest anthology, which took a dark science-fiction conceit as its core and then invited a series of writers across the nation to pen stories set within that alternative universe. In this case, the stories (by Ray Charbonneau, Delphine Pontvieux, John Reed, Matthew Christman, Mark R. Brand and Lawrence Santoro) look back from a fictional twentieth anniversary of 9/11, but one where John McCain won the 2008 and ’12 elections, then Sarah Palin in 2016 and ’20; and with no government bailouts, no withdrawals from the Middle East, and no attempts to move away from an oil-based economy, the US has become a much bleaker and more terrible place, a nation that is now used to rolling electricity blackouts two or three days a week and that is just about to go to war with Mexico, where the permanently unemployed squat in half-finished McMansions out in crumbling suburbs that almost completely lack both gasoline and fresh fruit. A sobering reminder of what life under Tea Party rule would likely be like, “American Wasteland” is an antidote to the false cheeriness and optimism that has come with the tenth anniversary of 9/11, a more realistic look at all the mistakes this nation has made between then and now. —Quimby’s

Published by CCLAP

The Brooklyn Rail Fiction Anthology

edited by Donald Breckenridge

The Brooklyn Rail Fiction Anthology features writing by: Diane Williams, Brian Evenson, Caila Rossi, Lynda Schor, John Yau, Barbara Henning, Michael Martone, Jacques Roubaud (translated by Guy Bennet), Susan Daitch, Jim Feast, Martha King, Lynn Crawford, Lewis Warsh, Pat MacEnulty, Will Fleming, Carmen Firan (translated by Dorin Motz), Bart Cameron, Constanza Jaramillo Cathcart, Aaron Zimmerman, Sharon Mesmer, Jeremy Sigler, Jill Magi, Blake Radcliffe, Meredith Brosnan, Evan Harris, Douglas Glover, Johannah Rogers, Jonathan Baumbach, Marie Carter, Doug Nufer, Leslie Scalapino, Robert Pinget (translated by Barbara Wright), Elizabeth Reddin, Kenneth Bernard, R. M. Berry, Thomas D’Adamo, Albert Mobilio, John Reed, and Kurt Strahm.

Published by HANGING LOOSE PRESS

Here is a welcome anthology of inventive fictions by celebrated practitioners – Williams, Daitch, Evenson, Marton – and newer writers deserving celebration. —Christine Schutt

Donald Breckenridge’s anthology brings together a brilliant collection of writers, recent, new, and newest. It’s a bewilderingly impressive achievement.  —Harry Mathews

VITAMIN Ph

NEW PERSPECTIVES IN PHOTOGRAPHY

Edited by T.J. Demos and Editors of Phaidon Press

The Definitive Book on Photography Today; Featuring 121 Artists from Over 30 Countries. 

The life of an artistic medium lies in the capricious nature of the contemporary art market. Even the heavy-hitters – painting, sculpture and drawing – have fallen victim to this ebb and flow; declared dead one moment, only to be resurrected the next. Now it is photography’s turn to contemplate its fate atop this precarious fence. Does it fall backward and play into the taunts that call photography an “obsolete” medium, so stretched and manipulated by its collaborations with other practices that it is rendered indefinable? Or, inspired by globalization, does it jump forward into distinction, with practitioners resuscitating the traditional form of the documentary image?

VITAMIN Ph: NEW PERSPECTIVES IN PHOTOGRAPHY, with an introduction by TJ Demos, is the definitive book on photography in the contemporary art world today. VITAMIN Ph is a global survey of new developments in the medium of photography, featuring 121 living artists who have made a contribution to the international art photography scene in the last five years.

In VITAMIN Ph, the featured artists are presented in A to Z order. For each artist, approximately five selections of work are reproduced alongside text by a critic who is a specialist on the artist’s career. The surveys cover the artists’ careers to date and explain the methods and subject matter featured in recent works.

Whether the style is documentary, deadpan, abstract, or portraiture; no matter that the artists are sculptors, video artists, painters, and photography has become a vital part of contemporary art. VITAMIN Ph is the only book of its kind to illustrate the up-to-the-minute complexity, variety and global spectrum of photography today.

The book follows the similar concept, scope and structure to Phaidon’s successful volumes Vitamin P (2002), for painting, and Vitamin D (2005), for drawing. 

  • A global, up-to-the-minute survey of new developments in contemporary photography
  • Features the work of 121 living photographers who have made a fresh and innovative contribution to international art photography in the last five years, nominated by influential critics, curators and artists from around the world
  • Approximately 500 images depict the rich variety and current trends in the medium
  • Texts by significant critics, curators, art historians and creative writers representing a wide variety of perspectives
  • Both a reference for the art world and an accessible guide for those with an interest in photography at all levels

Including 121 artists from 40 different countries as selected by 79 curators, critics and established artists, Vitamin Ph includes the following artists: 

Armando Andrade Tudela, Alexander Apostól, Miriam Bäckström, Yto Barrada, Erica Baum, Valérie Belin, Walead Beshty, Rut Blees Luxemburg, Luchezar Boyadjiev, Frank Breuer, Olaf Breuning, Gerard Byrne, Elinor Carucci, David Claerbout, Anne Collier, Phil Collins, Kelli Connell, Eduardo Consuegra, Sharon Core, Rochelle Costi, Gregory Crewdson, Nancy Davenport, Tim Davis, Tacita Dean, Olafur Eliasson, Hans Eijkelboom, JH Engström, Lalla Essaydi, Roe Ethridge, Peter Fraser, Yang Fudong, Anna Gaskell, Simryn Gill, Anthony Goicolea, Geert Goiris, David Goldblatt, Katy Grannan, AES+F group, The Atlas Group/Walid Raad, Mauricio Guillen, Jitka Hanzlová, Anne Hardy, Rachel Harrison, Jonathan Hernández, Sarah Hobbs, Emily Jacir, Valérie Jouve, Yeondoo Jung, Rinko Kawauchi, Annette Kelm, Idris Khan, Joachim Koester, Panos Kokkinias, Luisa Lambri, An-My Lê, Tim Lee, Nikki S Lee, Zoe Leonard, Armin Linke, Sharon Lockhart, Vera Lutter, Florian Maier-Aichen, Malerie Marder, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Gareth McConnell, Scott McFarland, Ryan McGinley, Trish Morrissey, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Zanele Muholi, Oliver Musovik, Kelly Nipper, Nils Norman, Catherine Opie, Esteban Pastorino Díaz, Paul Pfeiffer, Sarah Pickering, Peter Piller, Rosângela Rennó, Mauro Restiffe, Robin Rhode, Sophy Rickett, Noguchi Rika, Andrea Robbins/Max Becher, Ricarda Roggan, Anri Sala, Dean Sameshima, Alessandra Sanguinetti, Markus Schinwald, Gregor Schneider, Collier Schorr, Josef Schulz, Paul Shambroom, Ahlam Shibli, Yinka Shonibare, Efrat Shvily, Santiago Sierra, Paul Sietsema, Alex Slade, Sean Snyder, Alec Soth, Heidi Specker, Hannah Starkey, Simon Starling, John Stezaker, Clare Strand, Darren Sylvester, Guy Tillim, Nazif Topçuoglu, Danny Treacy, Fatimah Tuggar, Céline van Balen, Annika von Hausswolff, Bettina von Zwehl, Deborah Willis, Sharon Ya’ari, Catherine Yass, Shizuka Yokomizo, Amir Zaki, Liu Zheng, Tobias Zielony 

With and introduction by TJ Demos and individual texts about the artists by Rodrigo Alonso, Thomas Boutoux, Isolde Brielmaier, Stuart Comer, Dina Deitsch, TJ Demos, Frits Giertsberg, Mark Godfrey, Catherine Grant, Alison Green, Katerina Gregos, Rachel Haidu, Jens Hoffmann, Michael Ned Holte, Ana Finel Honigman, Vincent Honoré, Vasif Kortun, Sarah Lewis, Roxana Marcoci, Dominic Molon, Shamim M Momin, Jessica Morgan, Jonathan Napack, Sally O’Reilly, Tetsuya Ozaki, Bethany Pappalardo, Alona Pardo, John Reed, Catsou Roberts, Jose Roca, Barry Schwabsky, Brian Sholis, Luke Skrebowski, Kerstin Stremmel, Margaret Sundell, Gloria Sutton, Nato Thompson, Sarah Thornton, Grant Watson, Axel Wieder

Published by PHAIDON PRESS

100 Greatest Albums

edited by Jacob Hoye

with contributions from Harlan Coban, John Reed, Michael J. Garvey, Joe S. Harrington, Stuart Cohn, Raquel Bruno, and David P. Galuski  

VH1’s 100 Greatest Albums television series sparked much debate about the accuracy of its list, but it was a great guide for any serious or casual music fan as to which albums should be staples in any record collection. As a book, the 100 Greatest Albums will be the perfect reference for building a substantive and thorough collection, as well as just being an entertaining read about some of the most important works ever created in music history. The book follows the order of the list, starting at 100 and working towards number one. Each album is discussed thoroughly across a two-page spread and each spread will include; an image of the album cover, the year of release, the record label, production and engineering credits, band members and instruments played, appropriate quote or quotes about the album from other artists, an essay that gives context to the album by examining its historical significance and detailing what makes the album unique by diving into the songs.

Published by VH1

Morasses

by Andre Gide

With an introduction by John Reed (excerpted):

The literary figures of the mid-twentieth century are simultaneously, paradoxically, cultural heroes and yokel blunderers, stalwart independents and villainous conformists; they are loudmouths about communism, the greatest political experiment since democracy, and they are sometimes perspicacious and sage, and they are sometimes petty and wicked. They are the Russian Revolution, and they are the CIA/British Secret Service Congress for Cultural Freedom, led by a vanguard of Arthur Koestler, George Orwell, and Bertrand Russell, with its fundamental mission to brainwash the entire world. They are Ezra Pound, and his radio pontifications for the Nazis. They are anti-semitism, they are knee-jerk atavism, they are racism and sexism, and they are every other nasty, trollish habituation of people-kind. But they are also courageous resistance, enormous personal loss, and a Western outlook that expanded, became more inclusive and humane—socially, sexually, racially and culturally. André Gideʼs early satirical work, Morasses, can be looked at as a historical curiosity, an allegory of literary Paris—of nineteenth century salons and a quaintly seductive, if frequently silly and petty, vision of the arts. …

Published by CALYPSO EDITIONS

A leisurely stroll through the hall of mirrors of a writer’s mind (never was a book more aptly named), this deadpan comic fantasia on the creative life is not typical André Gide, but like a parody of the games he later played in The Counterfeiters. It’s a grandparent to My Struggle by Karl Ove Knaussgaard, only much funnier. —Christopher Bram

Discovering Gide’s Morasses is like finding that there’s one more chocolate left in the box when you thought they were all long gone. Tadzio Koelb’s note-perfect translation of this neglected miniature by the master ironist captures both the subtlety and freshness of Gide’s prose. Morasses is faux-fiction wrapped in a faux journal (by the greatest of 20th century diarists). This tale of swamps, ducks and pretentious poets defies genres and expectations. It is hilarious and it is delicious. It’s a gift not to be resisted, an indulgence I’d advise you to give in to today. —Robert Marshall

Tadzio Koelb has found a voice in English for Gide that artfully recreates the elegance of the prose in Morasses and also the humor. An assured and delightful translation. —Idra Novey

Devouring the Green

Fear of a Human Planet: An Anthology of New Writing

Edited by Sam Witt

Art by Christopher Arabadjis

Introduction by Sam Witt, preface by Debra Di Blasi, and new contributions by 90 renowned poets.

The inspiration for DEVOURING THE GREEN anthology arose from the editor’s and publisher’s own investigations into new technologies and ecological disasters as related to the art of language.

We invited a diversity of writers to submit poems addressing the ecological, technical and spiritual related to these questions relevant to the world today.

Jaded Ibis Press searches for provocative poetry that maintains a thread to the past while exploring concerns related to human sentience in an increasingly non-sentient world. To this end, DEVOURING THE GREEN anthology of cyborg/eco-poetry questions the increasingly porous border between the world of machines and the world of nature.

Published by JADED IBIS PRESS

Organized around a series of questions drawing attention to how the 21st century has complicated our experiences of nature, the body, and human activity, Devouring the Green pushes an exciting range of contemporary poets to resist nostalgic, simplified notions of our human place in the world and, rather, to focus unflinchingly on the many ways we entangle with—and, by our presence, irrevocably change—the world around us. The poems gathered here are alternately visionary, wry, celebratory, angry, elegiac, and apocalyptic—dizzyingly broad in their scope and, above all else, timely. This is a wonderfully unique, ambitious, and challenging anthology. —Wayne Miller, poet & editor, The City, Our City and Literary Publishing in the 21st Century

What a harrowing and ultimately energizing anthology Sam Witt has created in Devouring the Green.  Here, the human merges with the cyborg or, in moments that seem both Whitmanian and darkly fabulist, all of us merge uncomfortably with the natural world we are, simultaneously, destroying.  “Would you call humans an invasive species?”  Witt asks in one of his many prompts that inspired the poets in this collection.  “Are the dead an invasive species?” Wild, visionary, and cacophonous, these poems work to position our selves anew and, so, ask us to think about our responsibilities to others and to our environment in radical, discomforting ways. —Kevin Prufer, poet and editor, Churches and Into English: An Anthology of Multiple Translations